Obama acknowledges racial tensions

Jul 29, 2010 — Politico

Giovanni Russonello

President Barack Obama offered an uncommonly candid discussion of race during his appearance aired Thursday on “The View,” saying people still must confront their “reptilian side” when dealing with people of different races.

“There is still kind of a reptilian side of our brain, that part of our brain that, if somebody looks different or sounds different, that there’s part of us that is cautious. And what we have to do is fight against that,” Obama said on the popular morning show, which he taped Wednesday.

“When it comes to race, let’s acknowledge that of course there is still tensions out there, there’s still inequalities out there, there’s still discrimination out there,” Obama said. “But we’ve made progress, and if each of us takes it upon ourselves to treat people with fairness and be able to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes and relate to where they’re coming from, then we can make more progress.”

Expanding on his view of the Shirley Sherrod controversy, Obama said the former Department of Agriculture employee had been speaking about her struggle to overcome bias in the video that generated a feeding frenzy in the media earlier this month.

“What Shirley Sherrod was trying to say in the speech, if you actually read the whole speech, she was acknowledging, ‘I have my own biases based on my experiences, but if I am able to look inward and reflect, then I can get beyond my biases.’ And that’s an exercise that all of us have to undergo day in, day out,” Obama said.

“What I do think happened in that situation is that a 24/7 media cycle that’s always looking for controversy … generated a phony controversy,” he said. “And part of the lesson that I want other people to draw is, let’s not assume the worst about other people.”

Sherrod announced Thursday she planned to sue conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who aired the heavily edited video. 

Barbara Walters, the show’s founder and a co-host who has been absent after undergoing heart surgery in May, asked Obama why he does not openly proclaim himself to be the nation’s first black president. Obama said that his multiracial identity is much more complicated than any single label can justify, but he said it would be unwise to pretend the public does not see him for what he is: African-American.

“Part of what I realized is that if the world saw me as African-American, then that wasn’t something that I had to run away from,” Obama said, describing his younger self. “I can be African-American, I can be multiracial, you name it — but what matters is, am I caring for people?”

The show’s hosts also engaged Obama on topics such as the economy and the war in Afghanistan, and he defended his policies in the face of growing national discontent with his performance on an array of issues. He and conservative host Elisabeth Hasselbeck disagreed over the issue of whether Obama is in touch enough with Americans who have lost their jobs.

Hasselbeck challenged Obama to stop using the term “saved jobs” to describe jobs that his administration says would have been lost if not for its policies. But Obama replied that his administration has actually helped create new jobs.

“We were losing, at that time, 750,000 jobs per month,” Obama said, referring to when he took office. “What has been gratifying is the fact that the economy now is starting to stabilize and grow again.”